loonyblog.

IGN PC: Left Behind RTS Planned.

Hey I guess it could be worse…it could be a first person shooter where you play Jesus taking out the sinners. Or even better! A tactical shooter where you play angels rounding up heathens. Or the ultimate god game…an RPG where you play god in his holy quest! (The Jesus summon attack would totally rule).

Yeah, I’m going to hell. But at least I’ll have some games to play when I get there.

…where you can’t get the imperial theme from Star Wars out of your head?

Nothing makes the work day weirder than having that tune stuck in your head. Well, I guess if I had carnival music that might be weirder, but then I’d also have to check myself into a mental institution on my way home.

In one of the wackier cross-promotional ideas to come along in a while, the Niebaum-Coppola Winery is offering a special edition of the Apocalypse Now Redux DVD that comes in a real, 3 liter bottle of the winery’s cabernet sauvignon. The DVD sits in a special drawer that slides out of the bottom of the bottle. It’s a clever idea, but I can think of a few other substances that would make for a better pairing with that movie than a mild California red.

The following blog post was written last Tuesday from my Blackberry, as I sat on the runway at JFK following one of the more entertaining airline mishaps I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing. Read on for this ever-so-odd tale of flying fun.

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Yeah, that didn’t take long…there are so many trailers out now, that I figured a second post was necessary. You know the deal, read on for the whole thing.

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It’s been a while since I’ve done a trailer roundup…largely because of the relative dearth of decent trailers. Thankfully, there are a lot of ‘em out there now, so here’s a quick run through some of them.

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From BBC News: New model ‘permits time travel’.

It’s an interesting read. Of course, like most actual scientific articles about time travel, they’re talking about quantum time travel, and not you know…Terminator 2 or anything. But it’s still interesting.

I have no way of comprehending anything related to quantum physics, but I do know logic, and so the problem I have comes in when they start applying this process in terms of actual people traveling backwards in time. Here’s an excerpt:

The researchers say these constraints exist because of the weird laws of quantum mechanics even though, traditionally, they don’t account for a backwards movement in time.

Quantum behaviour is governed by probabilities. Before something has actually been observed, there are a number of possibilities regarding its state. But once its state has been measured those possibilities shrink to one - uncertainty is eliminated.

So, if you know the present, you cannot change it. If, for example, you know your father is alive today, the laws of the quantum universe state that there is no possibility of him being killed in the past.

It is as if, in some strange way, the present takes account of all the possible routes back into the past and, because your father is certainly alive, none of the routes back can possibly lead to his death.

Which is actually an argument I’ve heard many times before. You can’t change the past, because the past has already happened, right? Except of course, that when you’re dealing with people and time travel, unless there’s an artificial means for keeping them from altering the timeline (such as the guides in “A Distant Sound of Thunder”, however ineffective they may have been), there’s nothing to explicitly prevent them from doing so.

But of course, this is all science fiction. Quantum time travel doesn’t have such limitations or larger questions, because it happens on a scale so small that most of us with normal brains can’t begin to comprehend. Still kinda cool to wrap your brain around though, ain’t it?

Apple’s latest trademark: “Numbers“. Speculation is that this is to be the name for their spreadsheet application in the next version of iWork. If true (and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it is), surely this signals the end of creativity for Apple, at least when it comes to product names.

Okay, so they’ve never been particularly creative with product names, but “iTunes”, “Final Cut Pro” and “Garage Band” are pratically brilliant compared to “Mail”, “Pages” and now “Numbers”. Spreadsheets don’t have to sound sexy, but come on…”Numbers”? Surely their design staff could spend more than five minutes coming up with a title for this program. Although I guess it’s better than “iSheet” or something like that…

One of the sad truths about genre television, is that by the time most people discover most decent sci-fi shows, they’re long off the air. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, as it took me several years after the demise of Babylon 5 to discover that show. In the interest of notifying people of shows that are actually still on the air that are worth watching, I’m letting you all know that you should be watching The Dead Zone.

As sci-fi shows go, it’s certainly not an amazing, instant-classic by any means, but it is tremendously entertaining. The heart of the show is still based on the Stephen King book of the same name (memorably adapted for film by Cronenberg), and tells the story of Johnny Smith, a guy who is in a car accident, wakes up years later and finds he has has the ability to see the future when he comes into contact with people. If you remember the movie or book, you already know the general idea, but the writers have done a great job extending the core storyline for four years and counting. They’ve also done a good job of introducing interesting side characters while never letting them outstay their welcome.

Fortunately, the key players are all tremendously likable, or else the show would completely collapse. Sure Anthony Michael Hall takes some getting used to, but he’s having a blast in this role and it shows. Nicole de Boer (Ezri Dax!), John L. Adams and Chris Bruno all added a great deal of depth to what could have been simplistic characters, and David Ogden Stiers does an excellent job as the Rev. Purdy.

The season premiere tied into the long-running story arc, but next week’s episode is standalone, and if this season’s like last year’s, then a good half of the season will be standalone as well. If you’re not watching it, give it a shot. Is it Babylon 5? No, but it’s good sci-fi television, and these days that should be commended.

Batman Begins? It’s good. Very good. Great, even. Much, much better than any previous Batman film. In my opinion it’s not quite on the same level as Spider-Man 2 or X-Men 2, but it’s great nonetheless. I have some fanboyish issues with the movie, but I’ll save that for another post.

The short version is this: if you like Batman, even a little, you’ll want to see this movie. It’s not an instant classic by any means, but it’s damn good cinema regardless.